Existence is meaningless, so we believe

In fairies, and Zeus, and in Adam and Eve,

In Mohammed, Paterno, Bumgarner and Jeter,

In Jesus, LeBron, Click and Clack, and St. Peter.

Call it fate. Call it nature.

It’s hard-wired our brains

To seek cause for effect,

To seek that which explains

Why Meursault shot that guy in the sun in Algeria,

Why ISIS beheads the do-gooders in Syria

Why heroes who selflessly care for the dying

Not only get sick but endure vilifying.

In her last fevered anguish at bleak Bergen Belsen,

Anne walked back her thinking on people’s essentials.

The fables of Aesop, the suras, the psalms

The wisdom of ages. Forget ’em. They’re wrong.

When the universe speaks, it speaks with asperity

Sit on your butt and forget about charity.

So there’s that. . .  but take heart, slip the slough of despond

By turning your eyes from the doubtful beyond.

By sugaring oatmeal and lacing up shoes.

By sweeping the stoop and foregoing some booze.

Give a dime to the homeless, recycle that bottle,

Grow organic tomatoes and improvise doggerel.

See each action taken, both little and small

As heroic defiance by us against all.

Make beauty, speak truth, do extravagant kindness.

How unwise. How absurd. And how else to define us?